This website posted a list of features

http://www.carlustblog.com/2014/09/knight-industries-two-thousand-kitt.html

engine is listed as a Knight Industries Turbojet with modified afterburners.

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I'm not certain of the correct color for a production Pontiac engine of that vintage though I am certain there ought to be forum members who would know the color

I WISH they provided a turbojet with modified afterburners!  That would make my decision so much easier.  Ha-ha-ha!  But all they gave me was a choice between "stock" and "turbo charged".  I'm just surprised at how impossible it is to find a picture of the original K.I.T.T. car with the hood popped open.

Eric

A stock '82 Pontiac Firebird engine was mainly black and bare aluminum, like below.

Here is what someone fabbed up to make a KITT replica based on the car from the show.

Thank you Heavy!  I've seen a lot of pictures on the 'net of people who've built their own K.I.T.T. cars but I was never sure how they were to being accurate under the hood.  I like the look of that guy's custom job, though.  It just seemed odd to me to have an orange engine sitting in the middle of this neat black car.  I think I might use the pictures above to plan my build.

Thanks again,

Eric

Yup, orange is totally wrong for a Pontiac engine.  Orange was/is a Chevy engine color.  Prior to '82, Pontiac engines were always a shade of blue.  They went black in '82 and newer. 

Check here for more info:  http://www.pontiacpower.org/enginecolor.htm

The amount of stuff I don't know utterly baffles me at times.  LOL!  I think I'm going to come to the conclusion that it's freakin' KNIGHT RIDER!  Everything will be black or various shades thereof.  Even if the engines in real 1982 Pontiac Trans Ams were blue, The Hoff wouldn't ride around in a car with a blue engine.

Eric

The Hoff was good. The '82 model was the year the went to black.  Maybe he made them change it so he wouldn't have a sissy blue engine.

Lol! Anyway my Trans Am has a aluminum and black engine but she is a 2002 though!

Bonnie would make sure KITT looked good inside and out, I had the biggest crush on her back then! 

Gees !

Yer all lucky . My Poncho had a Turquoise engine . Least that's what the label on the touch up can said !

echolmberg

the option of two engines:  stock and turbo charged.  Which one would be the correct one to use to depict the KITT car?

use the stock option. KR vehicles never had turbo (other than a button that says turbo boost). the actual cars were stock apart from the nose and dash.

I think they may have shown the engine in the pilot episode when Michael was introduced to the car.  There was also an episode where the car was entered in a race to demonstrate the most fuel efficient engine and then maybe when they upgraded the car to make it able to stop and go faster and had parts of the shell that would actually move.  This was done by a civilian garage.

I'd go curbside and glue the hood closed, and concentrate on the interior and finish. You rarely saw the hood up or the engine being showcased.

OctaneOrange

echolmberg

the option of two engines:  stock and turbo charged.  Which one would be the correct one to use to depict the KITT car?

use the stock option. KR vehicles never had turbo (other than a button that says turbo boost). the actual cars were stock apart from the nose and dash.

That makes sense.  No sense spending the money for modified engine for a TV show unless they intended to show engine compartment in some episode, and writers could easily refrain from doing so.

I recale a scene in one the the episodes were the car was flipped over and it looked the car had a black rounded turbine like engine.

Believe it or not in some of the more extreame scenes beyond the limitations of stunt work the special effects people would us a modified large scale Revell 82' Firebird.  The roll over scene may have been one them.

Those R/C cars were only used in season 4, as budget contraints affected the show. They also tried using sandrails with fiberglass bodies for jumping scenes. It's the same thing that was happening in the last season of Dukes of Hazzard.

George Barrris built the KITT cars there were several of them and most of them had no engine at all.  The ones that were used for outside driving scenes just had the stock engine.  As other people have mentioned the stock engine would be the most accurate choice for the car driven in the show.  George's book has many detailed shots of the build up of the car.

sdaniels8

George Barrris built the KITT cars

George only did the convertible version, and the super-pursuit verison which was ugly. He didn't design the original cars.